Background
Walter Katte was born on November 11, 1830 in London, England, the son of Edwin and Isabella (James) Katte and a descendant of Edwin Katte, a political refugee from Prussia in the reign of Frederick the Great.
Walter Katte was born on November 11, 1830 in London, England, the son of Edwin and Isabella (James) Katte and a descendant of Edwin Katte, a political refugee from Prussia in the reign of Frederick the Great.
Katte attended Kings College School, London, and served a three-year apprenticeship in the office of a civil engineer.
In 1849 Katte came to America and obtained employment as a clerk and draftsman in the office of the chief engineer of the Central Railroad of New Jersey during the construction of the line from White-house to Easton, Pennsylvania. He then in 1851 went as a rodman to the Belvidere & Delaware Railroad, with which company he rose, in three years, to the position of division engineer. He was employed for a short time by a land company engaged in laying out the town of Dearman (now Irvington-on-Hudson), New York, and then became chief assistant to the engineer of the western division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1857 he was resident engineer of the state canals of Pennsylvania; in 1858-1859 served the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad, and in 1859-1861, the Pittsburgh & Steubenville Railroad.
In 1861 he was made a colonel in the United States Army in charge of wartime bridge and railroad construction in the vicinity of Washington, D. C. Among the other duties of this important military assignment, he directed the construction of the highway bridge ("Long Bridge") over the Potomac River between Washington and Virginia. He left the military service in 1863. In 1875 Katte closed a ten-year connection with the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh as superintending engineer for the erection of the Eads steel-arch bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, and the next year he served as engineer of the city of St. Louis. He then went to New York City as chief engineer of the New York Elevated Company and built the first sections of the Third Avenue and Ninth Avenue elevated structures, 1877-1880.
From 1886 to 1899 he was chief engineer, and after that, consulting engineer, with the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad. During his connection with this road he constructed the four-track, depressed right of way in New York City north of the Harlem River, the four-track steel viaduct in Park Avenue, and the Harlem River drawbridge, all major railroad constructions. The Harlem River bridge was the largest drawbridge then built and few surpass it in size today. He retired in 1905.
Katte was a director of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1885 and 1889.
Katte married Margaret Jack at Greensburg, Pennsylvania in 1859. She died in 1864, and on November 22, 1870, he married Elizabeth Pendleton Britton at St. Louis.